Needy Streamer Overload has some serious Black Mirror energies.
Hmmm so I know what you mean and I don't necessarily disagree, essentially, but I want to talk a bit about this observation.
Black Mirror is necessarily a bleak outlook about the twisted, high tech near future. NSO is fundamentally about both the present and how people feel and are constantly regardless of the era. NSO is a game that works Right Now because we are here, now, but also because it accurately encapsulates a state of being, of feeling, in the internet regardless of temporality. There's always been Ames. There are Ames right now. There always will be Ames. But what defines Ame -- the present -- is the era of streaming and streamers: Literally everyone can invest in some passable equipment, formulate a gimmick, and start streaming, start exposing themselves to the scrutiny, praise and brutality of the rest of the internet with the barest of filters in place. And not everyone is in the right state of mind or is possessed of the right gumption, the right mentality, to thrive in such an environment without repercussions.
But that's not all NSO is, and this is where the other fundamental difference with Black Mirror -- the first one being, again, a matter of temporality -- comes into play: NSO is not exclusively a critique of how there's always been people in tough places and with trauma or emotional turmoil but now they have the option to be the monkey in the cage for the world to see with barely any filter or regulation on how they do this, it's also completely honest about the good times, the halcyon memories, the experiences and the highs of, well, internet culture and being a netizen. There's something to be said about the internet as a location and its many risks, but that's the thing: No place is bereft of risks or dangers or however you want to call them, not online, not offline. If you focus only on the negative aspects -- and A LOT of people do -- then of course the world is going to look like an inhospitable hellzone.
The truth is, no place is perfect, or rather, absolute: There's no absolutely good and ideal place in the world, but there's no absolutely bad place either. The internet has many flaws, but there's something to be said about its many virtues, of the unique interactions between cultures and people very unlike yourself, connecting with people you have amazing chemistry with that you otherwise would NEVER have met due to geographic boundaries, late night conversations and playing sessions you never ever forget about, being able to identify with others when you are a loner IRL due to circumstance or pure lack of chemistry, there's a lot. And that's the thing, NSO also covers these, it's not "the game about the evils of streaming", it's a game about "the internet". The good, the bad, and the true.
That's why I feel so strongly about it, because it's a game with no agenda: It doesn't want to celebrate or condemn streaming, or the internet, it merely talks about it, pointing out the good and the bad, all while being entertaining, authentic, and not pretentious about it.
Should you heed the warning it presents? Yes, absolutely. Hell, I'll tell you as a streamer myself, there's a huge difference between what I do (small streamer with 300 followers on Twitch whose main motive is to have fun with friends) and what Ame was going for (let's go for 10000 followers in 10 days! And a million in a month, tops!). Going for broke is legitimately an unhealthy and extremely stressful thing to do. Heed the warning, indeed, but don't leave the rest of the message aside: There's fun to be had, experiences you can only have online, lifestyles you can only live online, and that's beautiful, too. The internet can be very enriching, and while bad things can happen in there, so too can very good things happen.
